Fairy Lies (22 page)

Although he knew he needed to look for the pink fairy dust and do what the sphinxes had suggested, he was reluctant to lose track of Tamisin until he knew more. It became harder to hide as they reached a more populated part of the forest. After almost tripping over a brownie lugging buckets of water from a stream, Jak apologized and moved back onto the path.

But then he lost sight of Tamisin. When he finally spotted her again, she was walking next to a tall, thin boy heading toward a large group of fairies. They stopped at a table where other fairies were gathered. The boy turned his head and Jak saw that his skin was an odd shade of blue and his hair was blue black.

It wasn’t long before Tamisin and the blue boy reached a spot where green-haired nymphs served food and drinks on a large flat rock covered with a filmy cloth. Fairies of all sizes were clustered around the rock, nibbling fruit and talking. A short distance away, fairy warriors were preparing for battle, but the main topic of conversation of the other fairies of Oberon’s court seemed to be the dance that was planned for that night.

Jak stayed back as Tamisin helped herself to a delicate tulip cup filled with some kind of liquid and selected a piece of fruit from a leaf platter. He watched as the blue boy frowned and said something to Tamisin when she reached for another piece. Her hand hovered over the fruit as if she really wanted it, but she looked up at the boy, then took her hand away. Jak heard a strange low sound and realized that it was coming from his own throat. He was growling. That blue boy was telling Tamisin what to do, and Jak didn’t like it.

Tamisin and the blue boy strolled off, leaving Jak on the far side of the group of fairies. He was looking for a way to go around them without being conspicuous when a trio of fairies spied him. Jak tried to ignore them as they pointed at him and giggled, talking about him in loud
whispers, but when the orange-haired fairy approached him with the others right behind, he had to stop or risk making a scene.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the orange-haired fairy asked. Her gown was orange, too, and she would have been hard to miss in any crowd. When she stopped, a second fairy came to stand beside her. Her bright yellow gown seemed to give off a light of its own, and she had a wide face with large dark eyes that studied him as if he were some sort of slime mold. The third member of their group was a male fairy dressed in greens and browns. He nodded stiffly when Jak glanced his way, then turned aside as if bored.

“Yes, I just arrived,” Jak told the orange-haired fairy.

“I’m Lily,” she said, giving him a sultry look, “and these are my friends Sunflower and Hawthorne. And you are . . .”

“Nihlo,” he said, sticking with the name he’d already given. He started to edge around them, hoping they could take a hint, but Lily stepped in front of him. “I really need to go,” he told her. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

“What kind of being are you?” Lily asked.

Jak hesitated. The fairy was forthright to the point of being rude, but maybe that was common in Oberon’s court. “I’m a cat goblin and—” Jak began.

“Cat goblin! Lily just loves cat goblins!” Sunflower said, and laughed so loud that all the fairies standing nearby turned to look.

Jak peered past the assembled fairies, looking for Tamisin, but she was no longer in sight.

“If you need someone to show you around, I’m available,” said Lily.

Hawthorne looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

A jostling, thumping sound made everyone turn to look at the two warrior fairies sprinting past, carrying baskets filled with reeds. These were bigger reeds than the kind Lieutenant Spruce and his fairies had carried, and Jak recognized them, having seen them used in battle. When Titania’s fairies had fought his uncle Targin’s goblins, they had filled such reeds with dust of various colors. If Jak was to find pink dust, his best bet might be to follow these fairies.

“Good day,” Jak said, and this time he sidestepped Lily and her friends before they could get in his way.

Jak didn’t want it to be too obvious that he was following the warriors, so he walked slowly until he was out of sight of the gathered fairies before he began to hurry. When something boomed and voices cried out, the warriors began to run. Jak ran, too, abandoning the path to cut across the forest. He slowed as the fairies entered a clearing and set their baskets on the ground beside fairies who were already there. The new arrivals were talking to the other warriors when Jak crept through the trees to a sheltering maple, where he hoped to see what was going on.

As soon as he saw what they were doing, Jak knew he had come to the right place. The fairies who had brought
the reeds handed them off to other warriors who were waiting. While the runners left the clearing, the new warriors took reeds from the baskets, filled them with dust from some round, squat jugs, and handed them to other runners, who carried the filled reeds to the far end of the meadow.

Unable to see the color of the dust, Jak climbed a tree to get a better look and almost fell out when he saw the number of warriors preparing for battle. He knew that Oberon had an army, but he’d never really thought about what that meant. The sky was alive with tiny fairies taking off and landing.

Hearing voices below him, Jak turned back to the warriors filling reeds and saw that more runners had arrived bringing more jugs of dust. From his new vantage point, Jak was pleased to see that he had a better view of the dust. The first few jugs were filled with yellow, the next held purple, the one after that held green, and, down at the end where he couldn’t quite see . . . blue.

Jak didn’t know what to do now. None of the jugs held pink dust. But if it wasn’t here, where was he going to find it? Perhaps the sphinxes had been mistaken. Perhaps it wasn’t pink dust he needed, but one of the other colors. If that were true, however, how would he know which one?

A whisper of sound made Jak start to turn around, and then he felt a hand on his ankle and his heart skipped a beat. He looked down, expecting to see one of Oberon’s warriors, but it was Lily, the orange-haired fairy.

“Shh!” she whispered with her finger to her lips. “You
have a choice. You can go with me and answer my questions, or I can start yelling and let all these brave, strong warriors know that they have a spy in their midst. Which one is it going to be?”

“I’ll be right there,” Jak replied.

Fearing that Lily would go back on her word and sound the alarm anyway, he scarcely breathed as he climbed out of the tree and followed her through the forest. When they were well away from the meadow, Lily stopped and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. Patting the trunk beside her, she said, “Sit,” and waited for Jak.

“I wasn’t spying,” Jak told her, although in a way he knew he was. He was also sure that no one would believe him if he told the truth, which he wasn’t about to try, because it was their king’s magic that he wanted to undo.

“Yeah, right,” Lily said, and pointed at the trunk beside her.

Jak sat as far from her as he could. “Let me guess: you want to know why I was in that tree.”

Lily laughed and shook her head. “Not at all. I want you to tell me about Tamisin.”

“What makes you think I know anything about her?” Jak asked.

“I saw the way you were watching her. You know her from somewhere, don’t you? You came here because of her. Tell me the truth or I’ll start screaming, and then I’ll tell the warriors that you were spying on them.”

“Yes, I know her,” Jak said reluctantly.

“Where did you meet her?”

“At school,” said Jak.

“Do you mean that horrible goblin school on that dreadful island out in the middle of nowhere? I’ve heard about that place. It sounds like torture to me. What happened? Was she making the royal rounds and stopped there to brighten the day of the poor little goblins trapped on the island? I bet honey wouldn’t dissolve in her mouth, that goody-two wings!”

“She’s not like that,” Jak said, even though he’d resolved not to tell Lily anything.

Obviously agitated, Lily hopped off the trunk and began to pace. “Don’t defend her to me!” she said, waving her hands in the air. “I’ve seen the way she smiles at everyone and acts like she’s their friend. Well, I don’t believe it for a minute! No fairy is that nice. She’s up to something, and I want to know what it is!”

“Tamisin isn’t up to anything!” Jak said, getting to his feet. “She’s a good person with a kind heart, and I don’t want to hear you talk about her like that!”

“Aha! The truth is out!” Lily cried, clapping her hands. “You’re in love with her. That’s why you came to court! Just wait until I tell everyone that a goblin is madly in love with our
beautiful
princess and she doesn’t love him, so he . . . Wait, could I be wrong? She does love you, doesn’t she?” Lily asked, seeing Jak’s expression. “That’s even better! Tamisin has a secret that she doesn’t want anyone to know! I think at this moment that I love you myself, just a little bit. Come here and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“No, thanks,” said Jak, turning his face away.

“You’re saving yourself for her, aren’t you? Well, we’ll see about that. Tonight at the dance you’ll dance with me. Everyone will be there, including your precious Tamisin. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when you choose me as your partner. And you will choose me, or I’ll tell everyone that you’re a spy. Understand, goblin?”

Jak nodded, feeling miserable. He was certain that Tamisin probably wouldn’t even remember him or care if he danced with every fairy girl there. When he turned to Lily again, she was doing a little happy dance; Jak couldn’t bear to talk to her any longer. There had to be some way to get her to leave him alone, even if it was just for a while. “If there’s a dance tonight, shouldn’t you be getting ready?” he asked. “The sun is already going down.”

Lily laughed and shook her head. “I don’t need to get ready. I’m always dressed for a dance!”

“Really?” said Jak. “Because you might want to take a brush to your hair and powder your nose or whatever girls do before a dance. I like your freckles, by the way.”

“Freckles!” shrieked Lily. “I don’t have freckles! Let me see . . .” Reaching into a fold in her dress, the fairy pulled out a small wooden box shaped like a lily blossom. She pressed a latch on the side and the top sprang open, revealing a rabbit-tail powder puff.

Jak was about to slip away when he noticed that the powder wasn’t powder at all, but bright pink fairy dust that covered the fairy’s freckles and faded to the color of her skin. It was the very dust he needed. Now all he had to do was get it from her.

“Let me see,” Jak said as he approached the fairy girl. Taking the box from her hand, he swiped the rabbit’s foot in the dust, then patted it on Lily’s nose. “That’s much better,” he said, and tucked the box in his pocket. “I’ll see you at the dance.”

Jak was already walking away when Lily called out, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He turned around to see that the fairy was holding out her hand. “My powder?”

Pulling the wooden box from his pocket, Jak strode back and handed it to her. She tucked it in the fold in her dress and said, “The first dance is mine.”

Jak was smiling as he walked away. Sticking his hand in his pocket, he rubbed the pink fairy dust between his fingers and laughed. Now all he had to do was find Tamisin, and avoid going to that dance.

Chapter 20

Jak had hoped to find Tamisin before the dance, but once the sun went down, he realized that he didn’t know his way around Oberon’s forest and was in danger of getting lost. He asked a passing nymph where the dance was going to be held and followed her directions to a large meadow between a stream and a wall of briars. The edge of the meadow was already crowded with milling fairies; a table made of split tree trunks had been set up at the far end. When Jak didn’t see Tamisin anywhere, he wandered over to the table, hoping to get something to quiet his grumbling stomach.

A woman with a smiling face presided over the table where nymphs were already serving drinks in tulip cups. Jak was surprised when the woman turned around and he saw another smiling face on the back of her head. She gestured to him and handed him a cup and a piece of crunchy brown bread slathered with squashed raspberries. “You’re Princess Tamisin’s friend, aren’t you?” she asked, leaning
close so no one else could hear. “Malcolm told me about you.”

“Do you know the princess?” Jak asked, his mouth watering at the nutty aroma of the bread.

“Go ahead and eat!” said the woman. “My name is Irinia, by the way. I like your Tamisin. Just about everyone who isn’t a fairy does. She’s nicer than most fairies. I’m not surprised she has a goblin boyfriend.”

Jak swallowed the food in his mouth. “I thought that was supposed to be a secret,” he said, searching the crowd for Lily and hoping he wouldn’t find her.

“If you mean that unsavory piece of work, Lily, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Everyone knows that you’re here because of the princess—everyone who isn’t a fairy, that is. We have eyes and ears everywhere, we just don’t advertise it. Look, there’s your princess. You won’t be able to get near her for a while, not with those warriors around her. The fighting must be heating up. I suspect they think Titania will try to take her daughter back now. I hope that doesn’t happen. There are always innocent casualties when fairies fight fairies, and with all the fairies around here who don’t like Tamisin, an accident is bound to happen regardless of who wins. It would be a lot better for both sides if she just disappeared. With a good friend maybe. One who really cares about her. Tonight.”